X. Ho Yen's Author Newsletter (21 Dec 2023)
Greetings Dear Subscribers,
How are you? Any news? Send me a note. Seriously. I’m not kidding. :)
* Books
* Other Stuff
* The standard stuff
============ Books ============
”Custodians of the Future” now has two 5/5-star editorial reviews, which is great.
Another non-professional reviewer on another site totally panned the book, which was not great. But to my eyes it was clear that reviewer was never going to like the book anyway. They simply didn’t get it. They complained, in so many words, that the main character wasn’t a “Perfect Mary Sue” (a character with no flaws who always saves the day), were unable to understand motif, etc. I believe that site encourages such reviews in order to drive authors to beg people to join that site in order to upvote the book (which didn’t occur to me until I read a post about that theory on the ALLi forum, unfortunately long after I’d paid that site to arrange a professional review not knowing their reviewers are not professionals). I refuse to be thusly manipulated.
Ah, well. You can’t please everyone. But now I’m gun-shy, especially since everything costs money and I’m uncontrollably motivated to not just keep pouring money into this out of impatience to find my audience.
But this highlights just how important reviews are for Indie authors. Everyone on the site which shall remain unnamed will see only that terrible review, and unless they visit my site to do further research and see counterbalancing editorial reviews, that’s it. That site will only ever do me harm.
============ Other stuff ============
1)
If you haven’t seen this documentary about Nichelle Nichols, to whom we all owe more than one major debt, do seek it out: https://woman-in-motion.com/
(I’m proud to have met her before she died, although I’m not proud of the fact that I gibbered and gushed uncontrollably. Normally I don’t get starstruck. I wasn’t even starstruck with Buzz Aldrin! Ah, well. There are worse things.)
And do you remember Ed Stone? He should be remembered!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_C._Stone (see pic with Nichelle)
2)
I’ve started a Substack. This is not something I’ve posted about on facebook, since I rag on facebook in my introductory post. :)
Check it out:
https://xhoyenauthor.substack.com/
The vision is to continue transitioning away from facebook by posting videos to my VLOG playlist and intelligent posts to Substack, posts like my simple Sturgeon’s Law post which fb group admins couldn’t handle.
3)
In the CAVEAT EMPTOR department…
Ten years ago, Harvard Business Review warned about trading privacy for convenience:
https://hbr.org/2013/06/beware-trading-privacy-for-con
With that in mind, look at this new product, and the launch ad video:
https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/9/23953901/humane-ai-pin-launch-date-price-openai
I don’t know about you, but the moment the hawker said the AI would “decide” which incoming messages are “important” to me, my Vulcan eyebrow shot upward. I was done.
Does anyone else find the idea of using AI systems to determine what’s important in your incoming messages insane? In what other ways will it decide things for the user, potentially ignoring your training?
I’ll end my rant with this: Remember that google hides other search engines from its results, and who knows what else that doesn’t profit google. Remember the Panama Papers. Remember how much (little) legal recourse we currently have against big data scraping and algorithmic intrusion. We as a buying bloc need to vote with our dollars and sense to force the technologists to come up with implementations that aren’t FAR WORSE than trading privacy for convenience. Implementations that decide for you what’s important will trade our very sentience, our only collective power, for mere convenience. Enough already with the convenience!
4)
This one little article contains several gems of information and fascinating lines of inquiry. Splendid!
5)
My presentation at Galacticon 2023 was kindly recorded by my new friends at HumanistTrek Podcast.
That allowed me to go back and use my slides to create a video of the presentation. You don’t have to see my ugly mug pointing at the screen, I use Powerpoint’s laser pointer mode to point at stuff I’m talking about. It worked out splendidly!
Please visit my VLOG playlist and find the Galacticon presentation. You’ll enjoy it! (The ~45 minute presentation is broken up into separate vids only because I’m not yet qualified to upload longer vids on youtube.)
And while you’re there, check out my guest appearance on Humanist Trek. We discuss the Star Trek: The Original Series episode “Day of the Dove”. It was a blast. :) “I’m the X…” :)
6)
I’ll be at the COSine convention in Colorado Springs this January. Hope to see you there.
============ The standard stuff ============
Here’s a printable, one-page ad for MSD if anyone has a nice bulletin board/ad column nearby.
All purchase options can be found here: https://XHoYenAuthor.com/books or at GrandUnificationMonastery.com. Both sites include links showing how several of the big vendors allow you to gift eBooks.
Thanks for sticking with me! I hope it’s at least mildly entertaining to watch this author second career thing come together.
Please do share my page with fellow realism-based sci fi fans, especially anyone who enjoys Andy Weir’s books, Older’s Infomocracy, Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon, Card’s Speaker for the Dead, Mandel’s Station Eleven, Corey’s The Expanse, or Suarez’ Delta-V. I'm convinced my books would appeal to the same audience, because I wrote it for me and *I'm* in that audience.
Thanks for your support!
XHY
https://XHoYenAuthor.com